A professor of religious studies, Kehinde Obasola, has expressed concern over the increasing wave of prosperity gospel emanating from the pulpits of many pentecostal churches in Nigeria.
He feared that it could be “counterproductive.”
Obasola specifically warned Nigerians to be vigilant while observing their religious obligations because of some prosperity preachers, who he said had adopted an “altered state of consciousness, peer pressure as well as hypnotic suggestions” to manipulate their followers into submission.
The scholar gave the warnings in the 115th inaugural lecture titled, “Delivering God From Evil: An Afro-philosophical Perspective” of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye, Ogun State.
With particular reference to adherents of the Christianity religion, Obasola urged them to interrogate every doctrine and messages emanating from the pulpits, warning that many of such patterns of preachers had deprived the congregants of their hard-earned money, plunging them into poverty as a result of the high contributions and levies imposed on them.
With particular emphasis on preachers, who constantly declared to their followers that their promised fortune will not materialise until they have “sown seeds”, paid tithes, made big cash donations, the professor lamented that while the prosperity gospel preachers are evidently amassing enormous wealth and living in opulence steadily, their followers have remained largely impoverished, having been plunged into poverty due to high routine contributions, tithes and special offerings imposed on them.
Citing over a dozen of preachers, being involved in purveying prosperity messages, Obasola said such line of teaching is inducing evil not only in Nigeria, but across the African continent, declaring that such practices is also “breeding occultism and cultic theology, greed and materialism” among others in society”.
“Churches are rapidly expanding in many parts of Africa today, yet sub-Saharan Africa is the only place in the world where poverty is increasing. The prosperity gospel is not working. It impoverishes the followers.”
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